Movie: "The Secret"

[OmegaWolf]

Some criticism of "The Secret" :

"Did King Deserve to be Assassinated? Do Kids Deserve to be Struck Down with Cancer?
Oprah's Strange Endorsement of "The Secret"
By PAT WOLFF

Have you heard about "The Secret" -- the New Age movie that Oprah was raving about last week?

"The Secret" is all about the universal laws of attraction. Basically the message of the movie is you get what you ask for. You send out positive energy and you receive positive energy. You send out negative energy and you receive negative energy. Ask for it, believe it, receive it. Obey the laws of attraction and you, too, will get rich, lose weight, find true love and true bliss.

I have nothing against positive thinking, prayer, and optimism. It's the flip side that bothers me. It's nonsense to believe that people who get sick, lose their jobs, or get murdered "asked for it" or "had it coming" or "deserved it." This blame-the-victim mentality only serves to protect the perpetrators or policies that caused the bad thing to happen in the first place.

Did Martin Luther King ask to be murdered?

Did my friend's daughter deserve to get cancer?

And what about the children killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing or in Baghdad today-- did they send out negative energy and ask to be blown up?

Bad things happen to people because there truly is evil and injustice in this world. That evil and injustice has to be confronted. Therefore, we must think about it.

New Agers want us to keep negative thoughts out of our minds, lest we attract the negative into our own lives, but refusing to see the negative does not make it disappear. Atrocities, bullies, crime, disease, violence, and war are realities we must deal with. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing to stop it.

A negative thought can be a good thing. It might be your conscience telling you that something is wrong. It might be your guardian angel warning you of a dangerous person. Your intuition can be your best friend.

My intuition says: be suspicious of those who tell us how to think.

Pat Wolff lives in ............, Minnesota. She can be reached at: removed by admin.

This was posted at: http://www.counterpunch.org/wolff02102007.html

[journyman161]

Here's another take on the Law of Attraction - I've linked to part 1 & 2 although the full one is available because the 2 parts have been re-mastered & the sound is much better in them.
The Power of Intention, Part 1 and The Power of Intention, Part 2

Wayne Dyer provides more detail & other ways to see it that may be more accessible. He has been around for a long time & moved from psychological improvement (Your Erroneous Zones) into the metaphysical (You'll See It When You Believe It) some time back.

Worth watching!

[journyman161]

Some criticism of "The Secret" :

I have nothing against positive thinking, prayer, and optimism. It's the flip side that bothers me. It's nonsense to believe that people who get sick, lose their jobs, or get murdered "asked for it" or "had it coming" or "deserved it." This blame-the-victim mentality only serves to protect the perpetrators or policies that caused the bad thing to happen in the first place.

Did Martin Luther King ask to be murdered?

Did my friend's daughter deserve to get cancer?

And what about the children killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing or in Baghdad today-- did they send out negative energy and ask to be blown up?

Bad things happen to people because there truly is evil and injustice in this world. That evil and injustice has to be confronted. Therefore, we must think about it.

New Agers want us to keep negative thoughts out of our minds, lest we attract the negative into our own lives, but refusing to see the negative does not make it disappear. Atrocities, bullies, crime, disease, violence, and war are realities we must deal with. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing to stop it.

A negative thought can be a good thing. It might be your conscience telling you that something is wrong. It might be your guardian angel warning you of a dangerous person. Your intuition can be your best friend.

My intuition says: be suspicious of those who tell us how to think.

It isn't about whether things are 'deserved' by those they happen to, but whether, by expecting bad stuff, you draw it in. The children in Oklahoma for example, were probably raised & indoctrinated by people whose view of life is that bad things happen, that the world is a dangerous place & that the 'Free' people will be under attack by those who hate freedom. How can I say this? Because I have frequented forums where I see the average US citizen thinks that way. Even after 911 it is still hard to find an American who can see that US policies may actually have driven the attacks, that maybe, if you look from the point of view of the 'terrorists' it is they who have been under attack for the past 40 years!

The cancer could be the result of the fears of the person based on the constant advertising of cancer as the scourge of our world. We have all these negative messages bombarding us constantly & on top of that, the predominant religion is constantly harping about how evil we are & how we need 'saving' because we are so sinful.

The 'New Agers' as you call them, are saying that if you can shut off the constant negative thoughts & beliefs, if you can reach a point of actually & actively 'modelling' positive thoughts & beliefs, your life WILL change. The cancer can go away (& let's face it, medicine STILL hasn't come up with an explanation for spontaneous remission)

The idea of having a positive expectation doesn't equate to some wishy-washy view of the world that will fail to see evil or bad things - in fact it empowers you to see them because they are no longer confused with the negative things you bring into your own life!

[Tempestinateapot]

I don't think, Jman, OmegaWolf wrote the article. Just posted it. Or, is OmegaWolf, Pat Wolff?

The article said:

I have nothing against positive thinking, prayer, and optimism. It's the flip side that bothers me. It's nonsense to believe that people who get sick, lose their jobs, or get murdered "asked for it" or "had it coming" or "deserved it." This blame-the-victim mentality only serves to protect the perpetrators or policies that caused the bad thing to happen in the first place.

This is a very normal way to look at it. In fact, I think the majority of the peeps in the U.S. see things this way. The answer to that lies in beliefs. If one believes in re-incarnation, a person very well might "deserve it". In balancing their karma, they may opt to spend a lifetime having so called bad things happen to them. 'Course this doesn't wash for people who don't believe or understand karma and re-incarnation.

OmegaWolf, I took out the person's email. We don't like email's in the forums due to privacy issues. I am leaving the link to the website, though, as that's ok by the rules.

[journyman161]

Good point TiaTP... My apologies Omegawolf - I was addressing the point made in the article, not your personal views.

[Willowy]

For me this movie and the Oprah episode just kind of clarified and simplified things that I was coming to believe anyway. I don't really feel like its a set of beliefs that anyone is trying to shove down anyone's throat. I found the movie inspirational.

Unfortunately I had company show up and missed the last half of the Oprah episode.

If people don't like the message, that's fine really. They can just tune it out and surround themselves with things they are more comfortable with. Of course if they are really pouring a lot of energy into hating it, they will probably encounter it everywhere.

[OmegaWolf]

I don't think, Jman, OmegaWolf wrote the article. Just posted it. Or, is OmegaWolf, Pat Wolff?

No, not me. I posted it in the interests of stirring up some discussion. I don't think the interpretation that the author came away with was what the creators intended but I can see how they might have come to that conclusion.

The example that sticks out most for me from the movie is the gay man who was constantly being harassed. He changed his mental attitude and everything around him changed. I believe this is possible, but it is also just as possible that the harassment might have continued even if his attitude changed. If that were the case it might be easy for him to blame himself for the problem due to the Law of Attraction.

My point is that there are forces that we cannot control, patterns that we don't understand, that may not give a damn about us as individuals. Gurdjieff called this the Law of Accident. This is the law that governs the lives of most human beings. Only by beginning to see and understand how we are slaves to this law do we begin to get free of it. When you start working on the Law of Attraction the Law of Accident does not stop. You are just starting to get free.

So I think the point is if you don't have an Intention or an Aim then you are more open to the Law of Accident. This could even be considered the sum total of the Law of Attraction operating for all beings outside of yourself.

OW

[journyman161]

I agree it is likely that with no Intention or Aim you are open to things 'just happening' but I'd debate the Law of Accident idea. To me, Accidents are simply Events for which you don't understand the Cause.

[TranQ]

I ordered it, watched it...cried, laughed...it was incredible. It was definitely "time" for we to watch this.

[CFTraveler]

Some criticism of "The Secret" :

"Did King Deserve to be Assassinated? Do Kids Deserve to be Struck Down with Cancer?
Oprah's Strange Endorsement of "The Secret"
By PAT WOLFF

Have you heard about "The Secret" -- the New Age movie that Oprah was raving about last week?

"The Secret" is all about the universal laws of attraction. Basically the message of the movie is you get what you ask for. You send out positive energy and you receive positive energy. You send out negative energy and you receive negative energy. Ask for it, believe it, receive it. Obey the laws of attraction and you, too, will get rich, lose weight, find true love and true bliss.

I have nothing against positive thinking, prayer, and optimism. It's the flip side that bothers me. It's nonsense to believe that people who get sick, lose their jobs, or get murdered "asked for it" or "had it coming" or "deserved it." This blame-the-victim mentality only serves to protect the perpetrators or policies that caused the bad thing to happen in the first place.

This person obviously doesn't get it. The Secret, or the New Thought Movement, doesn't teach that bad things happen because we deserve them. It teaches us that God gave us the power to create our own environment, and we can choose to believe this and act on it. The fact that 12 step groups are so popular shows that people realize that things about them attract a specific type of problem in their lives, and that they can change those type of patterns.

Did Martin Luther King ask to be murdered?

Did my friend's daughter deserve to get cancer?

And what about the children killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing or in Baghdad today-- did they send out negative energy and ask to be blown up?

It sounds like she's blaming the purveyors of 'positive thinking' ideas responsible for what happened to others.

Bad things happen to people because there truly is evil and injustice in this world. That evil and injustice has to be confronted. Therefore, we must think about it.

Evil and injustice are perpetrated by people who believe that the material world is all there is, and they must try to get it all. It's caused by the idea that 'there is just so much', and they must have it. Or it'll run out. If most people got that God is the source, maybe they wouldn't feel compelled to take from others and there would be less evil and injustice in the world.

New Agers want us to keep negative thoughts out of our minds, lest we attract the negative into our own lives,

Wrong. A person who truly understands what positive thinking is about, realizes that the idea of ignoring something that is happening is stupid, and what is needed is to eventually move your emotional energy towards the eventual solution of it. You have to think of the problem to resolve it, but if you can't get past how bad it is, you will never get past it to get to the solution.

but refusing to see the negative does not make it disappear. Atrocities, bullies, crime, disease, violence, and war are realities we must deal with. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing to stop it.

Once again, she either doesn't understand what he saw/read, or never saw/read it. Because it's very clear from the message, that ignoring problems doesn't make them dissappear, but reveling in a victim mentality and never going past it is the way to never get out of it. And the Secret, very clearly explains that action must always follow the process. In fact, it was stressed over and over. "Pray and Move Your Feet" was quoted. Positive thinking, or rather attaching energy to a positive outcome is necessary to then move and do something to make something better. If she thinks or believes that the positive movement teaches inaction then she is either talking about something she didn't acutally see or read, or has something against empowering people.

A negative thought can be a good thing. It might be your conscience telling you that something is wrong. It might be your guardian angel warning you of a dangerous person. Your intuition can be your best friend.

Another example of her inability to understand this. Having an intuition is not negative thinking. Feeling sorry for yourself and always blaming others for everything that happens to you is. Intuition is your connection to your higher power- if you get an intuition about something being not right- you must follow it. This is not the same as a negative thought. This comment shows me that she does not get it.

My intuition says: be suspicious of those who tell us how to think.

Right now I'm suspicious of anyone who tells me to have negative thoughts. Is this not telling me how to think? In fact, my intuition tells me this person wants me to feel victimized by the world. I wonder why?

Pat Wolff lives in ............, Minnesota. She can be reached at: removed by admin.

This was posted at: http://www.counterpunch.org/wolff02102007.html